He was scared. He could feel his muscles tensing up, locked into stiffness. Panic welled up in his gullet, and he fought to keep it down. The monster in front of him radiated such a wave of sickness that it nearly dragged him down into it.
He gritted his teeth, knowing his men would all be feeling the same. This was what the Iron Hands had come to show them. The horror could be fought.
‘For the Emperor!’ he cried, swinging his lasgun round and cracking off another beam. It hit an oncoming mutant in the face and ripped its cheek away, exposing rotten sinews and bone. ‘Fight, you dogs! Fight!’
The Iron Hands had closed in by then, and the swords came out. The blades shone in the darkness, lit up by disruptor fields. For the first time, the Space Marines’ movements broke from uniformity. They span on their ankles, shifting to evade the lash of the tentacles, before chopping through the curtains of flab. They remained silent, working with cool expertise, moving their limbs with exactitude.
The beast was the first opponent capable of truly contesting their will. It raged against them, flailing and whipping. One of the Space Marines was slammed back on to its back by a lightning jab from the claws. It crashed to the floor, rolling across the slime before coming to a halt. The mutants were on it in a second, hacking and chopping.
The Iron Hand powered back to its feet, scattering the corrupted bodies around it as it rose. The bolter juddered as it was drawn around in a tight arc, blasting the mutants to slivers. Then he charged back into contact with the beast, just as silent as before, just as implacable. By then two more of the Iron Hands had been forced on to the defensive, rocked by the furious response from the bloated horror before them.
Khamed advanced cautiously, maintaining a steady rate of fire. His entire platoon was in the chamber, and the flicker of their las-beams lit the walls up. For the first time, it felt like his contribution might make a difference. The horde of lesser mutants began to thin out, exposing the monster at their heart.
‘Aim for… that!’ he roared, striding through the clinging fluid and feeling it slop over the lip of his boots.
The thicket of las-beams concentrated, cracking against the beast’s hide and puncturing the wobbling epidermis. It wailed under the barrage. The las-beams alone would have done little to trouble it, but combined with the fury of the Iron Hands bolter fire and bladework, they had an effect.
The downed Space Marines cut themselves free. One of them – Morvox, perhaps – fought his way up to the folds of neck-flesh, slicing and plunging with his crackling energy weapon. Another took the killing claws off the end of a tentacle with a savage swipe from his sword.
Slowly, purposefully, they were killing it. Barbs snapped out, wrapping around necks and limbs, but they were snapped off. Bile streamed from the beast’s mouth, acidic and searing. It splattered against the hard armour and cascaded to the floor in fizzing lumps. The heavy bolter kept up its drumming, thunderous roar, punctuated by staccato bursts from the sidearms.
The residual mob of lesser mutants was beginning to lose cohesion. They blundered around, no longer advancing with any purpose.
‘Pick your targets!’ shouted Khamed. ‘Headshots! Maintain barrage on the beast! Do not give–’
Then it happened. The skirts of flesh shrunk back, withdrawing into a shivering kernel. The screaming reached a fresh crescendo of hate-laced desperation. The beast thrashed around in its death-agony, jaws splayed and bleeding, tentacles writhing. It bled from a thousand wounds, each of them pouring with jelly-like tumours. The bolts kept punching into it. The blades kept biting, crackling with disruptor energy.
Its face went white. Its eye stared wildly, straining from the single socket. Veins stood out from the white skin in a lattice of purple, throbbing and tight with incipient destruction.
For a second longer, it still burned in agony.
Just a second.
Then it exploded. The beast blew itself apart, rocking the structure above and around it to the core. A tide of rubbery flesh rolled out like a breaking wave, surging across the chamber and rushing up the walls. Greasy, fist-sized hunks of gristle peppered the chamber. Flaps of skin sailed into the air, trailing long lines of sputoid blood and plasma. Semi-formed organs sailed high, falling apart in mid-air and breaking into slabs of quivering muscle.
Khamed was knocked from his feet by the storm, just like the rest of his men. He crashed on his back, felled by a rain of slapping body parts. He hit the filth hard and body-hot fluid ran through the chinks in his armour.
Repelled, he staggered back to his feet, shaking himself down. He wiped his visor and dirty streaks of red ran across it.
Ahead of him was a crater of gelatinous meat, laced with sticky globules of nerve-endings and lymph-nodes. It shivered as the fluid cascaded over it, running over the floor and swaying with the current.
And amid the ruin of the beast, the five Iron Hands stood. Their armour dripped with sludge. Their guns were silent. For the first time in days, the howls of the mutants were gone. The only sound was the echo of the explosion and the slap and gurgle of the gore-tide as it ran against the walls.
Khamed watched them, feeling the weakness in his overtired limbs.
‘Throne,’ he whispered, hardly daring to believe it. ‘Throne of Earth.’
Khamed looked around him. His men – those that had survived – were dead on their feet. All were exhausted. A few had collapsed into the foul water and stayed there. Despite that, despite everything, most of the rest carried themselves with more pride that at any time over the past six months. They knew what they’d achieved.
Khamed let a smile crease across his grimy face.
‘Namogh,’ he voxed, hoisting his lasgun over his shoulder. ‘Get your grunts down here.’
‘Progress?’ came the reply. He sounded worried.
‘Pretty good. Fast as you can.’
Khamed killed the link and limped over to where the Iron Hands were congregating. All five of them were still standing in the centre of the beast’s gigantic cadaver. Four of them, Grond included, were calmly reloading their weapons. The fifth, Morvox by the look of his armour, had waded deeper into the slough of burned flesh and was rummaging around in the heap of entrails and fluid.
‘You have our thanks, lord,’ said Khamed, coming up to Grond and smiling broadly. ‘We could not have done this without you.’
Grond didn’t turn to face him. He was looking intently at Morvox. They all were. Intrigued, Khamed followed their gaze.
After some more searching, the Sergeant seemed to find what he was looking for. He straightened up, clutching something in his left hand.
It was a tube, formed from dark metal. Khamed couldn’t make much out in the dim light – it was less than twenty centimetres long, blunt and rounded at the ends. There were markings on it, but nothing he could make out clearly.
Morvox turned back and strode toward them. As he did so, the armour of his right forearm opened. The vambrace panel came apart in two halves, exposing an empty space where the limb should have been. Morvox stowed the tube inside the receptacle and closed the shell of ceramite over it again.
Khamed frowned. For some reason, he felt suddenly worried. There had been no mention, at any time, of a mission to retrieve an object from the underhive.
‘What is this, Grond?’ he asked.
The Iron Hand didn’t reply. Morvox spoke instead.
‘Our task is complete, mortal,’ came the metallic voice, as eerily thin as ever. ‘Our ship has been summoned from orbit. The cleansing is over.’
For a moment, Khamed didn’t believe what he was hearing. He stumbled over his response.
‘But, with respect, lord–’ he began. As the words left his mouth, his earlier euphoria was replaced with a cold dread. ‘There are hundreds of mutants left alive. We have cleansed less than half of what we came for. There may be more such beasts.
We need you.’
Morvox’s dark facemask loomed over him. Khamed suddenly realised that the other Iron Hands were all facing him. They said nothing. They were like images in a cathedral, cold and dead.
‘You make demands on us now, human?’ Morvox asked. There was no emotion in the question, but somehow it conveyed a sense of absolute, utter menace.
Khamed swallowed, and felt his fists clench uselessly. He felt ridiculous, like a child stealing in on some adult affair and demanding attention. Stubbornly, from somewhere, he found the will to protest.
‘No demands,’ he said, disgusted at how timorous his voice sounded. ‘But, lord, we cannot defeat the enemy that still remains. You cannot leave us now.’
‘You speak as if your battle here is the only concern we have. You know nothing of the war that burns across the galaxy. You know nothing of the demands on us. If you wish to be worthy of preservation, then guard this ground. The Emperor protects those who resist.’
Then Morvox pushed past him and began to stalk back the way he’d come, back through the thousands of shafts and chambers and up into the inhabited zones. One by one, his squad turned to follow him.
Khamed watched them go in desperation. He knew, just as they surely did, that for them to leave now was little short of murder. The mutants would rally. Mortal troops alone were no match for the horrors that still squatted in the underhive – something that had been proved time and again over the past six months.
‘Grond!’ he cried, reaching out to clutch at the Iron Hand who had saved his life. ‘You cannot mean this! The Spire can be cleansed! Do not leave us. Mercy of the Emperor, do not leave us!’
Grond looked at him just once. Khamed stared up into the softly reflective surface of the helm’s lenses. He realised then that he had no idea what kind of creature existed behind that mask. No idea at all.
‘Can you fight?’ asked the Space Marine.
The question needed no answer. Khamed knew what the responses were. Perhaps Grond had tried to warn him of this the first time he’d asked it. The Iron Hands only cared about strength.
Namogh had been right. Old, cynical Namogh.
Khamed hung his head, and let his hand slip from the Space Marine’s arm. He could already hear scrabbling from the levels below. The mutants were stirring again.
Grond strode off to join his battle brothers, not giving Khamed another glance. All five of them walked past the lostari in the chamber, ignoring the looks of disbelief from the human troops. Their heavy footfalls gradually receded as they passed through the connecting chambers and headed on up.
Khamed only raised his head when Namogh’s squad burst into the chamber.
‘What the hell’s going on?’ demanded the deputy. ‘We just marched past your beloved Space Marines, and they’re all going the wrong–’
He stopped short. Perhaps something in Khamed’s empty expression told him all he needed to know.
‘We’re on our own,’ said Khamed, and his voice was hollow.
For a moment, Namogh was lost for words. He looked at Khamed, then back at where the Iron Hands had gone, then back at Khamed.
‘Those… bastards,’ he spat. ‘Those damned… bastards.’
The troops in the chamber, all of whom had heard the exchanges with Morvox, began to disintegrate. Some collapsed, empty-eyed and limp. Others started weeping. None of them ran. They knew there was nowhere to go.
Namogh managed to get a lid on his fury, and fixed Khamed with an urgent glare. His indignation made him speak too fast.
‘What are we going to do, Jen?’ he blurted. ‘What are we going to tell Tralmo? What the hell am I going to tell my men? Holy Terra, what are they thinking, running out now? Why the hell come here, if they didn’t intend to finish this thing off? What’re we going to do?’
Khamed only half listened. He had no answers. He could hear the first screams of fury and lust from the tunnels below. The mutants were coming already. Soon they would be in the chamber, rushing through the slime, eyes shining with hatred.
Khamed felt a deep, horrifying weariness suffuse his limbs. His whole body ached. He’d pushed himself to the limit, and there was nothing left to give.
We’re nothing to them. Just spare parts.
‘Gather your men,’ he said, unhoisting his lasgun and checking the charge. ‘We’ll make a stand three levels up. Call in the reserves – if we can get the siege doors closed, we might hold some ground for a while.’
Namogh looked at him as if he were mad.
‘You think we’ll hold them? You really think we stand any kind of chance? What’s different this time?’
Khamed shook his head grimly.
‘Nothing’s different, Orfen,’ he said. ‘Nothing. Except, perhaps, for one thing.’
He looked away, past the stinking morass of the beast’s carcass and down the tunnels beyond. He could feel the tide of unreasoning madness building down there. He knew it would not respect defiance. It respected nothing. It would just keep on coming.
Can you fight?
‘I now know how the universe operates, my friend,’ he said bleakly. ‘For a while, I had dared to hope otherwise. I believed that this place might have some significance for them. That we might.’
He laughed bitterly.
‘Better to die knowing the truth, do you not think?’
VI
The probe made a 98-percent efficient descent from orbital platform 785699 to the receiving station in sector 56-788-DE of Forge 34 Xanthe manufactorium-schola-astartes. The statistics were logged on the grid and interpreted by the usual team of lexmechanics, after which three anomalies were corrected and allowed for, resulting in a two percentage point increment, to the satisfaction of all involved.
From the docking claw, the contents of the probe were conveyed by servitor nineteen levels down, past the major foundry zones and into the dense ganglia of shrines known colloquially in the sector as 1EF54A.
The cargo was transferred to Tech-Priests after a soak-test for data contagion and wrapped in three layers of soft dust-repelling cloth. The mark of the Machine God had been embroidered on the material in gold thread.
Thus clad, it went through six further pairs of hands, only two of which had any organic flesh left on the bones. More tests were performed, and ledgers filled out, and records made for the core lists.
Then, finally, the cargo reached its destination. It came to rest on an obsidian tabletop in a room lit by dark red tubes. For a long time, it lay there alone, untroubled and untouched.
Several local days later, Magos Technicus Yi-Me, once called Severina Mavola, entered the chamber and carefully unwrapped it. A tube lay at the centre of the cloth, its glossy surface reflecting the light of the lumens.
Yi-Me studied it for a long time. She use her basic optical replacements, as well as seventeen additional sensors built into her plasteel cranium.
Deep within her, in a part of her body that had remained relatively unchanged throughout all the years of biosurgery, a sensation of deep pleasure blossomed. If she’d still had lips, she would have smiled.
The artefact was powerful. Powerful, if the initial readings were confirmed, beyond even her expectations. It would certainly suffice for the task she had in mind, and perhaps for many more in the years ahead. Lucky, that it had been discovered. Lucky, also, that it had proved possible to retrieve.
She bowed her head, silently acknowledging the service rendered by the one who had once been her pupil.
Debt paid,+ she canted, knowing he couldn’t hear her, but enjoying the irony of addressing him nonetheless. Such tropes were a staple of the Jho school, something she still appreciated. +Naim Morvox, Iron Father: debt is paid in full.+
A hundred worlds. All different, all the same.
As I bring the light of the Emperor to each of them, knowing that every foe I face could
me the one that ends me, a single encounter remains prominent in my thoughts.
Helaj V, the Ghorgonspire. I remember the mortal there, the one named Raef Khamed. Even in sleep, sometimes, I see his face.
He expected much of us, once he had forgotten to fear. We could never match that expectation, not if we had eternity to accomplish the task and infinite resources to bring to bear.
Even so, I left the planet troubled. I never discussed it with Morvox. He would not have tolerated dispute from me, and that was before he was Iron Father. It seemed to me that our task was not finished, even though the objective was secured and our goals satisfied.
I remember how the mortals fought. I remember how they rose up when we were with them. Back in the warp, where dreams are ever vivid, I heard them plead for us to return. Or perhaps I heard their screams.
We never went back. I do not know what fate befell them. Maybe they prevailed. Maybe they were lost.
For many years, that troubled me.
Now, it does not. I understand what Morvox was doing. He had been purged of sentiment by then, just as I will be. He saw the greater pattern, and followed it. Such is the galaxy we inhabit. Resolve will preserve us; sentiment will see the light of humanity extinguished.
And so we allow ourselves to become this thing. We allow ourselves to become the machine. We are the result of a necessity, of the process.
The alternative is weakness.
I see this now. I see the truth of what I have been told by Morvox. Perhaps Helaj was the last time that I doubted. I am stronger now. I feel the imperfection within me, and long to purge it. In time, Emperor willing, I will go to Mars and learn the mysteries, just as he did.
Not yet. For now, there is too much of my old self, my old corruption. The flesh remains, impeding the progress of the machine.
I still feel the ghost of my old hand, the one they took away to mark my ascension into Raukaan. Far less, it is true, but I feel it nonetheless.
I wish never to feel it again. I wish to forget the face of Raef Khamed, to forget that there is hope and disappointment in the universe.
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